


The Price of Mastery

by Stonehill



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Hurt, Romance, but fluffy angst, post-Hama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonehill/pseuds/Stonehill
Summary: “I've always been taught,” she begins, voice slow and tired, “that water was life. Waterbending was a way to interact with our environment and bodies in a way that healed and created. Now it feels like death.”In her infatuation with her craft, with her identity as a Waterbender, she’d forgotten that the ocean is a terrible presence full of storms and monsters; a volatile presence that, once it’s grasped hold of you, might never let you go.Now she, too, has become one of those monsters of the deep.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 209





	The Price of Mastery

“I’m sorry.”

The world is beginning to return to her. It’s heavy and unclear; the earth beneath her, the silence of her friends around her. And it’s still dark, the type of darkness that stems from eyes closed with pain and shame, and tears that just won’t stop, that she isn’t ready to stop.

At her side Aang shifts subtly, his body bending to her voice, and his fingers dig succeptibly into her clothes. And she knows if he gets to speak he will make it better, make it all go away, reasonable Air Nomad that he is. He will logic his way out of it, with sympathy and love in his heart, and she isn’t ready to give up her emotions just yet.

“If I’d listened to you about Hama this wouldn’t happen,” she says. To her brother, to Sokka, because she knows he will either nag her or preen at having been right and it will redirect their attention away from her.

Only she isn’t as good at directing people’s minds as she is at directing their bodies apparently.

And Sokka, still kneeling at her side, places a hand on her shoulder, warm and big, and more and more like how an older brother ought to be.

“You can’t accept the blame for this, Katara,” he says. “It’s not as if we had any reasonable way to connect her to what was happening here, and she was nice to all of us.”

“Yeah,” Aang pipes in. “You didn’t have a reason to suspect her, so you didn’t. You acted with trust; that’s not an evil thing to do.”

They don’t get it.

They’re trying to be kind to her; treating her with care because of what happened, because of how fragile she suddenly seems.

Boys.

She wishes Toph were here. The harsher Earthbender would treat her as if she were still real.

Katara can still feel the life all around her, all the water that courses through the world, in the air, in the plants and trees. In the bodies of the people around her who trust her and care for her. Even as the moon passes beyond sight, she can feel it, the power she doesn’t want to hold on to, the knowledge she doesn’t want.

“But I—“

“Come on,” Sokka says. “We need to get back to the village. Get some rest. I’ll go see if some of the villagers have extra rooms we can borrow.”

As he trudges off, Aang releases his grip on her, and for a moment it feels as if the world has surrendered her to empty space.

“It’s okay, Katara,” he murmurs, fingers slipping down her arms and lifting her hands, gentle as the wind. “I’m still here.”

And for the first time she looks at him. Lifts her head and opens her eyes, tears flooding down her cheeks when there is no longer anything left to hold them back.

For the first time she sees him.

Not the sense of him, his strength or the life flowing beneath his skin, grounding him in reality more than ever before; no longer a little air spirit, intangible and untouchable. Just another human being who cannot resist the push and pull of the moon.

And Aang is beautiful, with solemn grey eyes and lips pressed together stubbornly for her sake. In the faded light of a hidden moon there is no red to mar his clothes; instead he is dressed all in greys and blacks, colour not stolen but hidden. Protected.

“I know,” she says, voice nothing more than a whisper in the night. She tries again. “I know you’re still here.”

His smile is enough to give her strength to take his hand, fingers curling where they had merely rested before; taking a hand that has grown larger and stronger while she hadn’t been paying attention.

As he helps pull her to her feet, the moon reemerges from beyond the clouds to cast a soft light over the valley.

* * *

Katara still needs help down into the valley.

Her battle with Hama has taxed her mind and her emotions, and her body has responded in kind, leaving her with little will to place her feet, one foot in front of the other.

She can hear the people of the village whispering all around her, senses their looks, but tries not to let them weigh too heavily on her. They are right, of course, she is as dangerous, as much of a witch now as Hama had been. And she is almost grateful for their mistrust; it numbs her to the pain and the guilt much better than Aang and her brother’s care and concern.

Sokka emerges out of the crowd with their things, dumping them at their feet. “Toph and I will help take care of the villagers who’d been kidnapped,” he informs them. “We’ve also found beds for everyone, but we’ll be separated because the only inn with space for all of us was Hama’s and, honestly —“ he shivers theatrically with disgust “—just going back there for our things was enough for me.”

“You should go with Katara, then,” Aang says. “You’re her brother, and—“

His hand begins to slip away from her side, and Katara wants so much to be strong on her own. She wants to draw power from the moon, breathe in and out, and feel the serenity it provides her. But all she can feel as she tries is the awareness of blood in other people’s veins; the lives of innocent people so easily subjugated against their wills, and—

She doesn’t want to let go of him just yet.

“Please, Aang,” she murmurs, and closes her eyes against the shame of it.

She is usually the strong one, the one who’s there for him. It’s never the other way around.

“Yeah,” Sokka says. He leans in to whisper something in Aang’s ear that stops the younger boy in his tracks. “Besides,” he adds, when he straightens a moment later. “Even if she could be alone right now, my sister can barely walk. She’s clearly in need of a crutch.”

Which is too much. Irritation washes over her, an angry wave from the ocean returning to shore, and she pulls her hand out of Aang’s grasp.

“I can walk on my own!” she snaps.

And it’s not a contest of wills she sees in her brother’s face when he grins down at her,but the pride of an older brother who knows his sister. “Then prove it,” he says, holding out their bags for her to take.

Katara glares up at him for a moment before snatching it out of his hand and marching off.

Only when her back is turned to her friends can she find a smile for herself; Sokka had found the best way of proving to her that there was no way he’d be afraid of her in spite of all that had happened.

* * *

The man who’d allowed them a single bedroom in the top of his house speaks mostly to Aang. His voice is low and soft in the dimly lit front hall, and his eyes are downcast but bright with unshed tears of relief.

The curse that has hung over the little village has been lifted, and loved ones are returning home for the first time in weeks and months. And Katara tries to comprehend the price she has paid for doing good.

She hadn’t done it on purpose this time; it hadn’t been a willful decision based on ideals. It had just been self-defence and the need to protect her loved ones from Hama. She can’t take credit for what she’s done.

Only when they’re on their way up the stairs does a little shadow pass through the door, and a child’s hand captures Katara’s.

She looks back over at the little girl’s bright brown eyes and the red lines that mar them. She looks like she’s cried and cried, until there were no more tears left.

“Thank you,” she says solemnly, and as she speaks again her voice breaks. “Thank you for saving mommy.”

And Katara—

Katara thinks her heart has grown too thin with guilt and shame. Katara thinks she’s grown too afraid of what the villagers might think of her, of becoming like Hama. A witch. Somebody coloured only in shades of hatred and vengeance.

Her heart breaks for the child still holding on to her hand, and it saves her just a little.

Katara falls to her knees by the stairs, and pulls her arms around the small frame of the little girl who has been through enough suffering. “I’m just glad she’s okay,” she murmurs into the little girl’s hair, hiding her tears there as best she can.

But even where she’d hoped to find solace she can still hear the rushing of the ocean, the blood in the little girl’s veins. It hurts. Aches in her every bone and muscle, until even her soul feels tired.

Katara smiles one last time at the little girl before getting to her feet, and avoid’s Aang’s eyes on her way up the stairs.

She can feel his gaze on her as he lets her pass, and hear the rustling of cloth as he bows to the father in the hall.

“It’s just down here,” he says when he catches up to her in the hall up-stairs, directing her to a door; one of two, which leads to an empty room. “Oh, and he said the futon is in the closet over here.”

Aang chatters with artful carelessness, filling the silence and the empty room around them, and Katara follows the directions of his voice, the words that flow and flow like water down a stream. It helps clear her mind, washes away the thoughts in her mind, and narrows in her senses so she doesn’t have to feel or sense the world around her. The people in the house.

Together they get two futons out of the closet; slim, old, and tattered they are not much protection from the hardness of the floor below, but Aang pushes them together with care and precision, grateful for the smallest comfort, as only an Air Nomad can be.

A gust of wind and the sheet hides that it was ever anything but complete bed to begin with, and Katara sinks gratefully to the floor to remove her sandals.

Aang follows her example, sitting on the edge of the futon so close his limbs brush hers as he moves about, removing his outer tunic and the bindings on his arms that make it easier for him to bend the elements.

His fingers work with deft precision under the light of the moon, following patterns they’ve taken a thousand times before.

Only when he’s finished with his clothes and boots, dropping them in a corner with their bags does Katara speak.

“What did my brother tell you?”

Aang hums in thought as he digs through the closet for blankets. “He said you needed somebody more diplomatic than an annoying older brother right now. Aha!” he adds, victoriously producing two moth eaten blankets. “These will do.”

“And,” Katara says, “what did he really say?”

The full moon catches the flush on Aang’s cheeks before he can hide it behind the blankets. “I’m sorry these are full of holes,” he says, evading her question. “But I left the blankets in Appa’s saddlebag, and, anyway, it’s hot enough here that—“

“Aang.”

Aang sighs and lowers his arms, an easy defeat. “He said you needed somebody who had reason to be gentle with you, more than an older brother who tends to piss you off in the best of circumstances.”

“That—“ Katara begins irritably.

It’s not the first time Sokka acts like the overbearing brother, and she knows this isn’t exactly it. He’s trying to be considerate, to treat her with care, and he’d dragged Aang into it for better efficiency.

Aang sighs and flops down beside her on the futon. “Yeah.”

“I don’t need other people to take care of me,” she insists with more fury.

“Well,” Aang says, glancing at her carefully. “You do tend to keep things to yourself, and in these types of circumstances I think having somebody to talk to would— at least, that’s what I prefer.”

It’s there in the empty spaces between his words, in the silence he leaves behind, whispered on a kind breeze. _You’re always there for me, and I want to be there for you in return._ And Katara wants to listen to those words, wants to let them cover her like a warm blanket or a seal skin to keep her warm.

But all she has is a blanket full of holes, too thin and worn to ever create any real comfort, and she digs her fingers into the harsh fibres to remind her of reality, turning away as she does.

“You don’t understand,” she murmurs, crawling further onto the futon.

She isn’t really hiding her face from him. She’s _not._

And Sokka isn’t right either. She can’t hear what he’d say in these situations; provoke her until she’s spilled all her secrets against her will. Pushed her beyond what she was willing to share.

But where Sokka uses words to cut beneath her defences, Aang uses silence. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t chase after her. He just sits at the edge of the futon, torso bending to follow her words, his eyes never leaving her face so that they’re the first thing she sees when she has no excuses left not to look at him.

“A power was forced on me that I can never be rid of,” she says. “One that hurts people, takes away their choices. Overpowers all those around me so the only thing keeping it in check is my own conscience. And you saw how well that worked when I felt I was out of choices.”

Aang tilts his head and doesn’t immediately respond to her words.

And Katara’s self-righteous, self-pitying anger ebbs away immediately at those words.

 _Right,_ her brother would say, voice in her hear full of sarcasm. _I’m sure the Avatar would be the last person in the world to understand what that feels like._

It’s her guilt speaking, and she almost reaches out to apologise, her first instinct to make the other party feel at ease.

Aang is always so full of bright cheer, his smiles and laughter contagious, it’s easy to forget that he carries a burden and a guilt all his own, one that has the weight of countless lifetimes on his shoulders. And most of the time Katara _wants_ to forget; she wants him to always remain that cheerful, goofy child who shines like the sun.

That’s what she fights for; that’s why she’s always tried to be there for him. Because she doesn’t want his smile to go away.

But something in his expression now forbids her gently from turning the conversation around to be about him.

“Toph says,” he begins, looking down at his hands, “that she uses the earth to see what’s around her. And to me the air is an extension of my limbs, of my movement in every waking moment—there simply is no difference between moving and Airbending. So perhaps becoming in tune with our elements, perhaps mastering that part of ourselves to such an extent means they don’t just become tools for us. They become an extension of our senses, too.”

As he speaks, Aang carefully moves closer to her. The sheets rustle underneath his bare feet, intermingling gently with his voice as he contemplates their existence.

When he takes her hand it is the firmness of his grasp that keeps her from running away; he isn’t treating her like a baby deer, or a porcelain vase. He isn’t treating her like something precious or breakable. He’s just treating her as a friend in need of comfort, as a human being who’s lost her path.

And Katara grasps his hand, trusting that he’ll lead her back to it.

“I always learnt,” she begins, voice slow and tired, “that water was life. Waterbending was a way to interact with our environment and bodies in a way that healed and created. Now it feels like death.”

In her infatuation with her craft, with her identity as a Waterbender, she’d forgotten that the ocean is a terrible presence full of storms and monsters; a volatile presence that, once it’s grasped hold of you, might never let you go.

Now she, too, has become one of those monsters of the deep.

“I can hear it,” she whispers, spreading out his hand so it opens like a lotus under her gentle prompting. “Like the rushing of the tide under the full moon. Only it never calms. And it never goes away.”

Even now, she doesn’t need to close her eyes to listen to the life under his skin, red and precious, a chain around his will that she can feel; that Katara is the only one who knows how to grasp now.

Here, in this little room; in a place with no one else, where the world is only their own, it almost feels like innocence, as if there are no consequences. So close to the surface of his skin, right outside her field of vision.

Her hand trembles over the palm of his hand, indecisive and afraid.

And again, it’s Aang who helps her make the decision. His free hand gently nudges hers, guiding her forwards.

Katara’s head flies up and she stares into his eyes. But the familiar grey betrays no fear of her. Instead, his smile overflows with kindness, warm and overwhelming like the air in the summer.

_If you wanna be a bender you have to let go of fear._

“So listen,” he says. “Listen to it until it becomes just another tide, just another rush of rain. Listen until the sound becomes so familiar it will never frighten you again.”

“Okay.”

Her assent is nothing more than a breath of air on her lips, but Aang hears it and nods, careful support all she finds in his expression, all she sees before she lets her eyes fall shut.

It’s not that they’re alone, that there are no one to judge her here for what has been forced upon her. It’s not that there are no witnesses and no condemnation. It’s that this is Aang sitting across from her, bright and reliable and safe; an old soul in a boy’s body, who knows with the surety of the world itself that she will not hurt him or steal his freedom.

And it’s his surety in her that stops her trembling as her fingers touch his skin.

It’s not like falling into the spirit world, like drowning in a sea of colour and sensation. It’s nothing like what Toph describes when she places her feet on the ground. And yetit rushes at her with just as much force; a sea of life that grounds her in reality, overwhelms her ears as only the ocean can do it.

The deep sea is a heavy burden of gravity, a push and a pull on fish and monsters, which have stolen the ability from the most careful humans, and the life from the most careless.

And, yet, when it comes to her as she holds the life of the Avatar in her hands again, it doesn’t frighten her or chase her away. Rather it is the pull of the moon she senses, hears; whispering to her in the darkness like a siren’s song.

Her fingers travel carefully up his arms, straying from the path of his arrow, following the pull that draws her closer.

There’s still a weakness in him, below the muscles that have reshaped after his return to consciousness; an ocean of qi that is locked away by his fear and his failure. Not a childhood weakness of ignorance and protection; no more will he ever be that person again. This is the weakness of almost adulthood, of regret and forced passivity, of self-hatred and a pride he cannot answer to. It trembles in his bones and his soul, and she senses it now, running parallel to the lifeblood that keeps him landlocked at her side.

Eventually, when experience no longer weighs him down, it will turn to real strength.

The cloth of Aang’s tunic rustles under her hand, but it doesn’t weaken the pull or the rushing in her ears, and she follows it across his shoulder, fingers following his collar bone so close under his skin.

It’s difficult to think here, to listen to anything but the way the moon pushes and pulls, so overwhelming that the world might’ve fallen away and Katara would’ve never noticed. It’s not frightening anymore, not something to weigh her down; just another extension of her senses, of her body and soul, which pull her to the sea, towards Aang, and—

Her hand lands over his heart, palm pressing down softly at her goal.

It beats frantically against his ribcage; a wild beat full of life and emotion, like a raging storm across the sea that turns even the gentlest of softs into crashing waves. The storm engulfs her, threatens to drown her, and Katara—

Katara pulls back, her eyes flying open.

“Sorry—“ she begins urgently, only to still in front of Aang.

Aang whose face is burning red.

Aang who doesn’t know where to keep his eyes, so they fly about the room, catching on nothing.

Aang who had sat still and let her invade his personal space.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, glancing at her from under his eyelashes.

And Katara is suddenly aware that her face, too, is burning in a blush.

“Okay.”

It doesn’t work. There’s a tension in her limbs she can’t explain, which the reassurance doesn’t help with, and her own heart is dancing as wildly in her chest as his had done when she’d touched him.

She’d touched him.

Katara’s heart skips at what she’d just done, the intimacy of it smacking her in the back of the head too late to undo, and her face feels suddenly like it’s on fire.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaims and hides her face in her hands.

Beside her Aang splutters. “Katara?”

“This was a bad idea.”

For a moment he remains still beside her, leaving her to the turmoil of her own embarrassed heart, the confusion in her mind. And then he starts laughing.

Loud and joyful, and not at all at her expense.

Katara’s head flies up from her hiding place.

“ _Aang!_ ”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, unbothered by her indignation.

He leans back against the heels of his hands and smiles so widely at her she almost forgets to be annoyed. Aang is blinding and it’s so easy to be swept up in his pace and mood.

“I don’t know about bad idea,” he counters cheerfully. “But it seems to me you’re able to carry your own burdens with more ease now.”

He tilts his head and his smile grows softer, and Katara’s face burns again.

“I—“ she begins, looking away. “You’re not wrong.”

“That’s great!”

His hand falls companionably on her shoulder, and when she looks up at him he’s right there at her side, smiling as if she’s accomplished something amazing.

“I’m happy for you, Katara.”

And just like that the embarrassment drains out of her, and she looks down at her hands again. “But…” she begins. “What if I… what if I change? What if I become like Hama? Being more comfortable with something like this means it’ll be an easier solution to turn to.”

“Every bender—heck, every person with a blade in their hand has that option,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what nature it takes; any weapon can be used to harm others.”

“Yes, Aang,” Katara bites out, “but this one doesn’t just harm. It takes away other people’s freedom of choice. I didn’t even want it to begin with.”

She almost hates him for taking his time to answer, for contemplating her existential plight seriously and doing his best to soothe her hurts. She doesn’t want to be soothed, she doesn’t want to trust herself. How can she trust herself when she’s already so much like Hama? When she’d felt such empathy for the old witch.

“War teaches us that passivity is weakness,” Aang says, cutting through her thoughts. “We always have to do something to stop it, and if we’re not then we’re only encouraging the enemy. But that’s not what the monks taught me. Air is passivity. It just exists around us to help us stay alive. It is passive in nature. But that doesn’t make it weak or useless.

“The same can be said for water; it can be a raging ocean or a rushing river, but it can also be a still mountain lake, or a pretty lagoon. And Katara,” he says, taking her hand. “You’re a powerful Waterbender. You don’t need bloodbending to fight for what you believe in or protect those you care for. With this, you can choose to be passive, and even if you’re in a bad situation, even if your loved ones are in danger, you will be able to protect them.”

“But…” Katara begins.

She knew he would reason his way out of this, argue with love and logic intertwined.

But she thinks of Hama. She thinks of this angry old woman, who’d lost everything to the Fire Nation, who’d chosen revenge and death. And Katara wonders if she’s any better, driven by emotion, by love and attachment, if she could choose differently if she were to face her own grief again.

She closes her eyes and sees the beautiful field of flowers that had so easily turned to black ash under Hama’s and her own hand. She thinks of the trees that had shattered into dust when all the water had been stolen from them.

And she remembers the swamp people of the Earth Kingdom, who had worked hand in hand with nature.

Her eyes flutter open. In her lap lies her own hand, finger’s intertwined with Aang’s.

And Katara smiles.

He’s too good at arguing his case.

“What if I change?”

“Well,” Aang says, drawing out the sound, thinking quickly on his feet. “The nature of water is change, so I suppose it can’t really be helped if you do.”

Katara laughs.

It escapes her unexpectedly, and with it all of the tension that had held her together, closed in on herself like a flower refusing to bend to the sun’s kind light.

She nudges him with her elbow in retaliation, and Aang grins in return.

“But I know you,” Aang murmurs. His free hand touches her chin and nudges her around to face him, so he can rest his forehead against her’s. His eyes flutter closed and Katara—

Katara exhales silently at the look of affection that crosses his features, smile a hidden secret at the edges of his lips. For her. Only for her.

“If you change it is always in the right direction,” he murmurs. “And if you were to lose yourself, I will be there for you the way you have always been there for me when I have lost myself. That is the way we never become monsters of the deep.”

And it hurts. It hurts how beautiful and understanding he is, how quickly he is shedding the innocence of childhood and seeing right through to her, reaching her heart with such ease. He whisks all her insecurities and fears away, and it hurts. It hurts because relief is a heavy feeling, relief is releasing tension and feeling pain, the cuts of a cruel wind, right as she lets it slip through her fingers.

A sob crawls its way into her throat and rips at it, tears its way out of her mouth. Tears draw trails down her cheeks, and she lets go of his hand, only to throw her arms around his neck instead.

And Aang simply catches her, holds her steady and lets her cry. One arm moves around her shoulders, but the other falls on her hair, gently pulling it free of the Fire Nation ornaments.

When the tears calm she rests her cheek on his shoulder, her nose nearly brushing the column of his throat.

She can still hear the blood under his skin, but it is a far away noise, like the rushing of the ocean or the sweep of the wind through leaves.

Another blush is slowly crawling up his neck to his cheeks, and she watches the emotions play on his face, waiting as he fidgets.

“What is it?”

Katara smiles. “I was just thinking,” she says. “Trust an Air Nomad to try and uphold everyone’s freedom of choice.”

“Nah,” he says. “You would’ve gotten there in the end. Water doesn’t like to be contained either. I just—“

_Had reason to be gentle with me._

The words are right there on her lips. She isn’t usually good at teasing others, but it would be so easy to make that blush burn brighter on his cheeks. But Katara isn’t ready to contemplate her emotions for the boy in her arms, she isn’t ready to face the immenseness of them or the changes they will bring to her life.

So she hides her face in the crook of his neck, tightens her grip around him, and avoids them.

“I know,” she murmurs. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
